


For Want of Change

by ItWasUs (AnonymousObsesser)



Series: To Change One Thing (Or More) [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DCU (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: AU, Again pretend this is how law enforcement works, Also if I ever say majority I LITERALLY MEAN "more than half", Also pretend that people ice skate onto their thirties, Also pretend this is how medicine and hospitals work because I don't care honestly, Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Barry Allen In A Coma, But there will be some flashbacks, F/M, First chapter is a summary of Part One as well as clarification, Gen, Icy Len, M/M, May be adapted into sequel for "when meddling w time" so if you like that one better lmk, Mostly Chronological, Multi, Part Two of TCOT (OM), Sequel, So it could be 51 percent and it'd still be majority, Timing of when people get powers is wacky and very much not normal or canon, Trigger Warning: References of Cutting, WARNING: SPANISH, bear with me, season one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 07:43:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11413335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousObsesser/pseuds/ItWasUs
Summary: Once the Particle Accelerator explodes, things only get more dicey for the citizens of Central City.Honestly. Superpowers? Really? What has the world come to?[ON HIATUS UNTIL I CAN GET MY LIFE BACK ON TRACK AFTER FUCKING UP SPECTACULARLY--MORE INFO IN CHAPTER SEVEN NOTES]





	1. THINGS THAT HAPPENED/WHAT WAS CANON IN PART ONE

Barry was taunted a great deal at school. He had many bullies, though there were other people that teased him, as well, without being a quote _bully_.

Barry and Iris met when they were six years old, and they were fast friends. When Barry was eight years old, he had a crush on Iris. This crush lasted for several years.

Barry was born on 14 January 1989. Len was born on 2 June 1988. Iris was born on 24 June 1989. Lisa was born on 8 August 1995.

Bette, Hartley, Mick, Sam, Digger, and Roy are one year older than Barry. Ronnie, Mark, Shawna, Tony, and Cisco are the same age as Barry. Clyde, Jake, and Axel are one year younger than Barry. Rosa and Roscoe Dillon are twins—they’re like Len, in the same grade as Barry but older than him. Len should be a grade higher than Barry, but his dad sucks so they’re in the same grade even though he’s almost six moths older than him.

Len and Lisa moved in with Barry, Iris, and Joe when Len, Iris, and Barry were in sixth grade and Lewis got arrested. Len and Iris were sort of friends, so Joe knew how Len would turn out if he didn’t do anything, so he took the kids in. Len and Barry become fast friends, and Barry slowly loses his crush on Iris in favor of one on Len. (Later, sexualities are established. Barry is bi and polyamorous, but mainly sticks to monogamy. Len is pan and honestly flirts with everyone all the time but no one ever realizes it. Iris is straight but experiments. Lisa is—well—lets go with pan and polyamorous, because she’s kind of a wild-child flirting machine, but she falls in love super easy and gets heartbroken really easily, since she didn’t get abused into hiding her emotions like Len did and she doesn’t have a good wall around her heart yet.) But just because Barry has a crush on Len doesn’t mean he likes him all the time, so they fight A LOT. About everything. Barry doesn’t let the arguments last more than a day because he believes in not going to bed angry. But sometimes things are just super bad.

Barry can draw. (I didn’t actually write this in, but it’s implied that Barry keeps a drawing journal.) Len steals a drawing he makes one day, of the night his mom died. It hasn’t come up again since then—Barry’s probably forgotten all about it—but it will in this story, probably.

Tony, Clyde, Sam, and Jake were Barry’s biggest tormentors. Digger was pretty bad, too.

Tony, Jake, and Digger got sent to juvie in seventh grade and never really came back. Jeremy Tell shows up briefly every now and then, but he’s really background so he doesn’t connect with anyone. Same with Frankie Kane. Hartley went to a private high school instead of the one Barry and co went to. Bette went to boot camp after 10th grade before going into the military at eighteen.

Ronnie, Barry, Cisco, and Len were chosen to skip two grades because of their geniusness and overall well-rounded-ness as students (good grades, volunteer work, tutoring, clubs, etc.). Only Cisco and Ronnie chose to do it, though, because Barry just wanted to be normal and Len was going to police academy anyway so there was really no point.

Len taught Barry how to fight the summer before 10th grade. Barry got hurt, decided fighting wasn’t for him. He’s out of practice. He does a few sports, though, in high school, because Len insists that just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you can’t do sports and because he forced Barry to take balance lessons in middle school because “no one is that clumsy unless they just never learned not to be”. So Barry had better balance and does a few sports without really getting into it like he does with other school things.

Barry, Mark, and Shawna dated in Sophomore year for a couple of months. Len didn’t like it—he and Barry got into some nasty disagreements from it. It was worse than any other fight they’ve ever had, and it took months for them to get back to being besties again.

Barry cross-dressed at Junior Prom because Iris found out that he’d been cutting (every now and then for the last few years since his mom died, just to make everything feel a little more in control for a little while, not enough to cause real damage or for anyone to really notice) and blackmailed him into helping her with an experiment. Barika Jones was the name they used, and people were just as annoyed with her as they were with Barry. Len thought she was hot, though, so…But everyone swore not to speak of it again and Iris promised not to tell anybody about the cutting.

Barry and Len co-wrote and spoke their graduation speech as co-valedictorians. It was cute.

After graduation, Barry spent the first month of vacation in the library working on his summer assignment. Then Len dragged him out to a ton of parties.

Iris takes college course locally in between shifts at Jitters. Len goes to police academy in Gotham so he can become a detective in Central. Barry goes to college in Coast City and does field training there, too, before coming back to Central and becoming a CSI. Iris finds out that Barry was shamed in college because he was a baby compared to everyone else. Also when he was doing field training no one believed in him. So he was really low and cut again. Except it wasn’t always him doing the damage? Like some people just beat him up. Also he tried smoking the first year at college, but it was super horrible so he stopped. And then he came back to Central and now he won’t ever cut again (probably) because he feels better and safer when he has Len and Lisa and Iris and Joe watching his back.

Len became a detective but he’s not Joe’s partner. People don’t really like him at CCPD, because he’s Lewis’ son and can’t be trusted but then they start supporting him a little when Joe smacks some sense into one of them.

Barry starts at CCPD after college/field training and gets teased/bullied a lot still but people still like him. It's only slightly (like...40%) worse than how siblings bully each other. Considering even his own family can't put up with him sometimes, Barry counts himself lucky.

Captain Singh has a soft spot for The West Clan, but he doesn’t show it. Also he bosses Barry around personally because he knows the kid isn’t getting enough guidance from the Director of CSI in CCPD. Because of this, Barry sees him as his direct boss and sometimes slips up and calls him Director Singh instead of Captain Singh, especially when Singh is yelling at him.

Eddie got transferred from Keystone to help in Central because of the big influx of population because of the Particle Accelerator, and he just ends up staying afterwards because Central is his new home. He’s still Detective Pretty Boy. Len and Joe don’t really like him, but Iris and Barry think he’s pretty. When he and Barry talk for the first time (before the lightning), he accidentally geeks about Barry’s blog, but it’s cool. Then the lightning strikes, and they can’t really talk.

Also Lisa is a dancer/figure skater and everyone is super proud of her and they love her a lot.

Barry is in love with Len but still gets attracted to other people. Len has a little bitty crush on Barry but won’t say anything because he doesn’t want to fuck everything up. Lisa and Iris and Joe are So Done with both of them but won’t tell either one that the other likes them because they respect their privacy and don’t want to let on that they know about the crushes. So the three of them know that Barry likes Len and that Len likes Barry, but Len and Barry don’t know that they are liked by the other and they also aren’t aware that literally everyone knows about their crush. And Len is still pretty convinced that his crush isn’t really anything worth talking about, anyway, because it’s really teeny-tiny in his opinion and he still kind of thinks Barry is in love with Iris or maybe even Mark and Shawna.

Barry goes to Starling and maybe has a little crush on both Oliver and Felicity? But he just hits on Felicity and it’s like they’re kindred spirits. Also Oliver looks like Ronnie???? Like whaaaaa? Barry hasn’t actually spoken to a lot of his high school buddies since everyone went to college, but they’re all on social media, so it’s not like everyone ditched.

Len, Vukovich, Joe, and Chyre all go to confront Clyde Mardon because he robbed a bank. Chyre gets shot, Len sees that Clyde has a hostage in the plane, the plane takes off. The Particle Accelerator explodes, sending a shock-wave that crashes the plane and sends Len flying back into an ice-covered building. The other three men are protected and Len passes out.

In Barry’s Lab (yep, that’s a proper name), Barry calls Felicity and they talk for a while and he kind of asks her out just a little. Then Barry gets struck by lightning and passes out and that’s how it ends! Dun-dun-dun!!!!!!!!


	2. Chapter One

“Len!”

Joe West lunged out from the safety of the barn, sprinting over to his son lying on the ground. The icy sleet pouring from the night sky cut into the back of his neck like daggers, but he barely felt it. The adrenaline coursing through him was too much.

He was kneeling beside Len within seconds, reaching out to try to wake him. “Len, son—”

Before his hand could really touch the man’s skin, the flesh _smoked_. Steam rose from Len’s body, curling up into the air with every drop of sleet that hit it. Joe’s tore his hand away, surprised. That shock only grew as he was frost cover Len’s body. It started from the back of his head, where he’d knocked against the barn wall, and slowly dripped down his arms and encircled his torso until his whole body was encased in a thin sheet of snow. Some of it didn’t stick, falling off onto the wet grass.

Joe watched for a moment in startled horror before snapping out of it. He had his phone out in seconds, 911 dialed in less time. He rattled off the address absently, snapping for an ambulance when the operator tried to reason with him.

“I am Detective West of the CCPD and I need an ambulance at this address _now_!”

“Yes, sir.”

It wasn’t two minutes later that the telltale sirens filled the air—within five minutes, Len and Chyre were both loaded up and ready to go. Joe climbed in with them, careful not to jostle the monitor hooked up to Len that broadcast his heartbeat for all to see. The beats seemed normal, at least to Joe, though the fact that they’d had to wedge the sensor _under his skin_ definitely was _not_ normal. It was the only way to detect it, though, through the ice covering Len.

On the way to the hospital, Joe got a call from Captain Singh.

“West.”

“Joe…”

The detective’s stomach dropped as his superior hesitated. “What’s going on?”

“Barry’s on his way to the hospital.”

* * *

_20 Minutes Ago_

Another night, another mugging.

It wasn’t like Eddie really _cared_ about who made arrests—the only reason he “kept score” was to make life interesting. Some might say that being a cop, chasing bad guys and all, ought to be interesting enough to keep him busy, but he really didn’t think it did. It was the same thing every time, with very little variation. It gets boring.

Whatever, maybe he’s just a millennial or something.

The two people he’d helped tonight, though, were pretty cool. Even if the woman seemed…bitter? He kind of got the impression that she was irritated by his cheer. Oh, well, though, you can’t please everybody. No matter how much he wishes he could.

Plus, they were both pretty hot. Even though the woman was slightly irate, she had this glimmer in her eye that was…beautiful. And the guy had blood gushing from his nose, but it just made his eyes pop adorably. Then, of course, he realized that they were the adoptive kids of Joe West, another detective at CCPD, and that he had actually talked to the guy—Barry Allen—and things got really awkward, because remembering that Eddie and Barry had spoken meant remembering that Eddie had shoved his foot into his mouth, which…yeah, he’d rather not remember that, much less talk about it.

It wasn’t like he was ashamed of liking Barry’s blog, but he hadn’t meant to be so _forward_ about his interest. Least of all by blurting, “Oh, god, you’re Barry Allen. You write for TWWOW! I pretty much based my outlook on life on your theory about storm-cloud molecules from other universes!”

Yeah…not the _greatest_ first impression, but he’d have to deal with it now.

Eddie turned in his report on the mugging with a smile, chatting with the officer at the desk for a few minutes. In his peripheral vision, he could see Barry and Iris filling out their own paperwork as Barry nursed his bloody nose. They were chatting with each other, and Eddie was sure he saw Iris send him more than one incredulous look. Not totally sure what that was all about, but okay.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away as Barry stood up, hugging Iris before turning in his statement and disappearing upstairs. Iris lingered by her chair for a moment before sitting back down heavily. Her shoulders slumped, her head bowed as she stared at her hands. They were shaking pretty bad. She was probably in a little bit of mild shock.

“Detective Thawne?”

“Yep,” he said, turning quickly to the woman beside him. “What’s up?”

“I went over Allen’s statement and paperwork,” she said. She held it out to him. “Looks like he missed a couple of papers. Not a big deal, but…it’s not like him. You mind checkin’ on the kid, gettin’ him to fill the rest out?”

Eddie sighed gently, taking the file. “Yeah, no problem.” His eyes flicked back over to the seating area, only to find it empty. He shook his head, giving the officer a bright smile and turning on his heel to head upstairs. When he got to the landing, he paused for a moment to look over the railing.

This was one of his favorite times of day to be in a police station. Late in the evening, when the shifts are changing and almost everyone is gathered in the main section of the department, all chatting over “morning” coffee and Motorcar sandwiches. In those few minutes before the shift changed, everyone was connected—like a community, or a family. It was nice to watch.

This was one of the reasons Eddie became a detective, after all. His parents were difficult, disconnected from him. He was never really interested in politics like his father, or medicine like his mother. Helping people, though? Bringing people into his circle and enjoying their company? Putting all the pieces of a case together, putting bad guys behind bars—hell, even the paperwork wasn’t bad, was actually preferable to interviews and boring meetings.

Sighing, he turned his back on the view as officers filed out in different directions. He whistled slowly and tapped the file against his palm along to the beat as he stepped down the hall.

Eddie turned the corner to continue his journey, but he jerked to a stop when something caught his eye out the window. Yellow and blue fibers seemed to explode from the particle accelerator, just visible across the city. The ground shook softly—though it was still enough to send him wobbling—and a cloud of fog erupted around the machine, billowing across the city. Power-lines sparked, street signs were sent flying, and every window of light in every building flickered off.

Noise ceased for a split second that seemed to last for a lifetime. Eddie stumbled forward in the dark, landing hard on his shoulder against the wall. He glanced down the hallway, spotting three—no, four—men leaning against shelving about ten feet away.

“You guys okay?” he called.

Everyone nodded, and he shoved himself into a standing position just as alarms flared overhead and the emergency lights started flashing.

“Everybody needs to get down to the lower level,” he yelled over the cacophony. Again, the four policemen nodded, though this time they started out of the hallway. Instead of following them, he kept to his original path

“Yo, man, where are you going?” Officer Johnson asked, grabbing his shoulder as he passed. Behind him, the other three officers disappeared around the corner and, presumably, down the stairs.

“Allen’s still in his lab,” Eddie explained. “I’m just gonna grab him and get out.”

“Lab Rat can take care of himself, Pretty Boy,” Johnson said with a snarl. “We gotta help out downstairs.”

Eddie jerked out of his hold. “I’m not gonna just—” He was cut off as the building shook again, this time a lot harder. “Motherf—what the hell was that?!”

A shower of pulverized concrete and insulation rained down on the two of them. The light bulbs hanging from the ceiling blew out, the glass crashing onto the tiled floor below. A fissure opened in the roof, water pouring in through it.

“No way that was an earthquake,” Johnson yelled. “The floor would be cracked, too. Look, Thawne, we gotta—”

“No,” Eddie snapped. “Johnson, head downstairs with the others. I’ll get Allen and meet you down there.”

The other man shook his head, baring his teeth visciously. “Whatever, go ahead.” He turned and sprinted back down the hall.

Eddie gazed at the ceiling for a minute. “Not an earthquake,” he repeated quietly. His eyes followed along the crack in the ceiling. “It didn’t come from below, which means—” His nose twitched and curled at the scent of burning chemicals. “Shit. Allen.”

And he was off, jogging shakily down the hall. He ripped his phone out of his pocket and hit the first speed-dial number. “Captain!”

“Thawne,” the other man barked. “Get the hell down here. Emergency protocol. I’m about to split everyone into teams.”

“Sorry for interrupting,” Eddie answered reflexively as he slid to a stop.

There was only one _lab_ in the CCPD building. It was old and cluttered, with a stuffy yet cold atmosphere that reminded everyone of grandma’s attic. But everyone also knew that Barry Allen loved it. He spent most of his time there, after all, and if he didn’t love it he’d have to hate it.

He cursed lowly—the door was locked, of course.

(It was almost never opened when Barry was in there alone. He was kind of jumpy, and he didn’t like it when people— _cough cough_ Len _cough cough_ —snuck up on him, so he’d gotten into the habit of shutting the door behind him. And locking it.)

Eddie knocked on the metal door, yelling, “Allen! You in there? Open up!”

No answer.

“Thawne.”

“There isn’t anyone left on this floor,” Eddie responded calmly. “Everybody else is downstairs with you. There’s a lot of damage up here, though.”

“Yeah,” Singh sighed. “I think there was an earthquake or something—”

“No,” he said quickly. “Actually, Captain, I’m pretty sure lightning struck.”

“It would have had to be pretty close to do that kind of damage.”

“Oh, it was close, alright,” Eddie replied bitterly. He grabbed the handle, yanking on it as hard as he could. He cursed again. “Allen’s lab is locked.”

"You sure he’s in there?”

"Pretty sure,” he told him. “Saw him head up here less than ten minutes ago, and he definitely didn’t come back down. But you’re the only one besides him that knows the override code, so I can’t get in. I thought the power outage would have knocked out the codec, but I guess—”

The police captain sighed again. “No, the emergency generator would have powered it back up. The lab isn’t outfitted with the right tech; the door doesn’t automatically open when the power’s out. The code is 070911.”

Eddie’s brow raised as he punched in the number. “Is that a date?”

“The date of his first day working here.” The line cut out.

He shook his head as he put his phone away, shoving the door open and stepping inside carefully. The chemicals he’d caught a whiff of in the hall were almost overpowering in the lab, and the floor was slippery with rain and different-colored liquids.

Eddie grimaced as the slime stuck to his boot.

“Allen?” he called.

He pointed his flashlight at the right side of the room. Everything was a mess—lights sparking, glass covering the floor, everything flooded with the water still pouring from the whole in the roof as well as the chemicals dripping from the shelves.

“Barry Allen?”

Slowly, he cast the light across the room, hitting on the darkest corners.

“Al—”

He almost dropped the flashlight, freezing in place.

Barry Allen was sprawled across a fallen shelving unit, limbs askew and hanging off the edges of the frame. Pieces of glass gleamed in the beam of the flashlight, the shards glittering against his red sweater.

Eddie cursed, gliding across the slick floor to get to the man’s side. “Allen?” he said calmly. “Allen, wake up.”

He reached a hand out to touch Barry’s arm, but his fingers barely grazed the fabric of his shirt before he jerked, flying against the wall from the force of static discharge hitting him.

His vision was clouded, and he blinked hard as he sat back up. “Damn.”

Shuffling over to the shelf again, he carefully reached out to touch Barry again, hesitant.

There wasn’t any electricity this time, and Eddie sighed in relief, shaking the man lightly.

“Barry. Hey, Allen. You gotta get up, man.”

No response. Eddie groaned, reaching over to check his pulse. Steady, but fast— _really_ fast.

He pulled his phone back out. “Singh, I need a medic up here.”

“Allen’s down?”

“Yeah.”

Singh cursed. “Is he…”

“No, his pulse is steady. He’s unconscious, though, and he won’t wake up. He needs to get to the hospital.”

“We’re on our way.”

Eddie settled back on his heels to wait, keeping an eye on Barry’s fluttering lashes. The kid’s breathing seemed steady, but it was slow, heavy. A few times, his breaths sped up to an almost inhuman pace before slowing back down again. Eddie reached out to touch him again, but stopped when a tiny stream of blue lightning erupted between his hand and Barry’s arm. His vision was clouding again, his own breaths becoming labored, so he backed off a little bit, just keeping watch.

The scent of ozone, burning wood, dirt, and chemicals clogged in his nose, creeping down his throat and into his lungs with a feeling like drowning in a boiling sea. His eyes burned with the fumes. Almost instinctively, he leaned over into Barry’s space. This time, three streams of lightning seemed to connect them.

The burning feeling went away. He felt steadier, could breath easier.

After a moment, though, the sting of the electricity became too strong, and he backed off again. The easy feeling stayed, though. He took in the lab again, blinking calmly and slowly as he took in the chaos.

 _Huh_ , Eddie though vaguely. _I think maybe I’m going into shock…_ The thought made him snort. _Shock. Oh, God. Puns. I read Barry's blog_ way _too much_.

He was broken from his thoughts when a clang sounded behind him. He spun on his heel, his eyes wide.

“Thawne? You in here?”

Eddie’s shoulders slumped at the police captain’s voice. “Yeah,” he called back. “We’re over here!”

Singh snapped around, immediately catching sight of the two men. “Oh, God,” he muttered.

It wasn’t ninety seconds before Barry was being loaded onto a stretcher and carried down the stairs toward the ambulance waiting outside. Captain Singh made Eddie go with him, convinced the blonde was going into shock at least a little bit.

Then he called Joe West, watching as the ambulance lights disappeared around the corner.

“Barry’s on his way to the hospital.”

“What—” Joe stopped and began again. “What happened?”

“We’re not sure,” Singh said calmly. “We think…he got struck by lightning.” Joe stayed silent on the other end, shocked. Singh sighed. “Where’s Snart? Is he with you? Were you close to the explosion?”

“We’re in an ambulance,” the man croaked. “Len’s unconscious and—and he’s covered in ice. It doesn’t make any sense. But he’s breathing, his heart is beating. We’re on our way to the hospital.”

The police captain pinched the bridge of his nose. “You should call the girls, get them to come down. You can’t handle both of your sons’ paperwork.”

“But how did—”

“I don’t know how any of this happened, Detective Thawne was closest to Barry when the lightning hit. He’s in the ambulance with him. You can talk to him at the hospital—but be careful, I think he’s in shock.”


	3. Chapter Two

Barry got to the hospital first. Iris was there thirty seconds later.

She went to get Lisa first, plucking her from her dorm room without anyone noticing. She hadn’t even needed to say anything. Lisa took one look at her shaking hands and swiveling head, saw the wild look in her eyes, and grabbed her emergency suitcase.

They all had one, though the contents varied. Lisa’s suitcase usually stayed under her dorm’s bed, unless she was visiting home, in which case she brought it to the house with her. She had clothes (at least twenty or thirty outfits ranging from formal dress to workout clothes), shoes, a few books, extra bandages for wrapping injuries, emergency cash tucked away in a hidden pocket, and a ton of gold accessories. But the rest of them, all living closer together, packed different things.

Dad had medical supplies and a few extra weapons, keeping the bag tucked away in the back of the hall closet.

Len kept his in his trunk, and he had anything from spare clothes for himself (and Barry—nobody was supposed to know about that, but Iris did) to weapons to a wad of emergency cash (which was stuffed in the lining of the suitcase) to books on engineering and physics.

Iris’s heavy-duty truck—locked with a padlock or five and specially outfitted with four different keypads—was safely stored in the backroom of Jitters the day she became a full-time worker, and it hadn’t moved since. The case carried clothes, books, coffee grounds, band-aids, and significant amount of cash—probably more than the rest of her family combined. She also kept odds-and-ends, stuff that no one else ever remembered to carry, like toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap and lotion, screwdrivers and scissors and sewing needles and buttons, unopened packs of underclothes and socks, pens and makeup and cold-presses and an array of medications and other random things that you really wouldn’t realize you needed until you didn’t have them anymore.

Barry’s was probably the weirdest. His trunk matched Iris’s, but half a square foot bigger and with even _more_ security, and he kept it stashed behind his desk, covered with his CSI supplies and odd little knick-knacks. He had a few outfits stashed (not enough for more than five or six days, hence Len’s stash of Barry’s clothes), a ton of books, more medical supplies than even Dad had. Besides that, he carried extra copies of every article, file, report, and picture he ever came across in the search for his mom’s killer, as well as science kits, an extra laptop that he never used but updated regularly, and a wad of cash. Iris wasn’t sure how much money he stored in there, but she knew for sure that he never took from it like the others, only added to it—at this point, nearly twelve years since he made the thing, it might even be bigger than hers.

Speaking of which.

The second Iris caught sight of Lisa’s bag, her eyes widened. “Barry’s is probably still in his lab, shit.” She pulled out her cell as they loaded up the car. “We can pick it up on the way. I’ll keep it in my car.”

“Not like anything’s gonna happen to it,” Lisa said, buckling up. “It’s been safe the last four years, after all.”

“Dad said the lab’s probably a mess,” Iris responded. She pulled out onto the highway, her speedometer already creeping higher. By the time they hit the first curve, the dial was at eighty and still climbing. “I don’t want to take the change of the stuff in there being damaged, or someone being stupid enough to try to open it.”

Lisa looked over at her, alarmed. “Nobody can open that case, Iris,” she said unsteadily. “It’s impossible. The only ones who know the codes and have access to the keys are—”

“Barry and Lenny, yeah, I know.” The dial hit a-hundred-and-five. “I’m not worried about anyone opening it—I’m worried about what will happen if they _can’t_ open it.” Iris sighed. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah.” Lisa yawned, inhaling deeply. She paused. “Do you smell that?” Her eyes widened as she gazed out the windshield. “Oh, God.”

Iris could see what she meant. It wasn’t that the town was destroyed, not really, but saying that it was a mess would have been an understatement. Most of the grid had gone dark, the emergency streetlights only now beginning to flicker to life. Street signs were tilted if not torn completely from the ground and thrown elsewhere. The roads, sidewalks, and buildings were more or less intact, but…there was something about it. Everything seemed a little distorted, uneven, wobbly. A fire hydrant had burst on one street, coating the asphalt in silty water.

Emergency vehicles swerved through the streets, stopping every few blocks to pick up the most injured people from any given building. Despite being relatively far from the blast, it seemed like quite a few people had been severely injured by one thing or another.

Iris cursed, taking a sharp turn and barreling toward the CCPD. She barely managed to skid to a stop in the parking lot, throwing her door open and leaving the keys in the ignition.

“Come on, Lise, we’ll be back in five minutes.”

Yeah, no, it actually took maybe two minutes. By some sheer luck, or maybe just a force of Iris’s iron-clad will, the two of them managed to sprint all the way up the stairs and into Barry’s Lab without anyone seeing them. They quickly dragged the chest back to the elevator.

(Said elevator, though in working order, did not have speed control, apparently, because the usual forty-second elevator ride took just over twenty seconds.)

They were back in the car, the trunk safely in the…trunk…and speeding toward the hospital before the song on the radio changed.

CCGen was an odd hospital. If you were new to the town, you probably wouldn’t be able to even begin to know where everything is. The ER—which was actually five ERs, all lined up—was on the other end of a long hall from the emergency drop-off station. The ORs—all ten of them—were lined up on the hall coming off of that one. The rest of the building was arranged haphazardly, with the morgue in a corner in the basement, the top floor reserved for “special guests” (a.k.a. politicians, celebrities, and prisoners), and the three floors in between containing hundreds of hospital rooms. The reception area—nicknamed “the breadbox”, because nobody ever used it, and if you did, you were very likely to sit and rot there—was as far away from the ER as you could get without being too close to the morgue. There were other sections of the hospital, too, separating everything so that it seemed like on big Picasso painting.

It wasn’t the only hospital in Central City, no, the town was much too big for that, but it was the most widely used one. There were actually two other hospitals in the city—one on the opposite side of the river, which they shared with their sister-city, Keystone, and one in the southern part of town, where medicine was scarce and no one really had anything resembling useful insurance—but CCGen was at the center, and most of the time, people just went there. Especially in an emergency, because when you needed care fast, you tended to put proximity over confusion.

Iris parked, fishtailing into an open spot and locking the doors before dragging Lisa toward the doors. It was late, and it was a city-wide emergency, so everyone was rushing around, looking exhausted and over-worked but wired all the same. The two of them didn’t hesitate to throw themselves into the fray. Especially when they caught sight of not one but two familiar figures.

“Barry!”

“Lenny!”

The women were separated by the crowd as they chased after the stretchers.

Iris got to Barry’s side first. “Oh, my God, Barry.”

He was completely unconscious, of course, and the medics were barking at each other and screeching at her as they wheeled his body down the hall. She wasn’t thinking, sprinting alongside his gurney in an attempt to get to Barry, to stay by him.

The medics pushed Barry straight into an ER. She didn’t even pause, automatically following him.

“Barry!” she shrieked.

A nurse blocked her path. “You can’t be in here.”

“Please!” she cried. “Please! I’m _family_! He’s my brother!”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t—”

“Barry!”

“Please—”

“Iris West?”

Spinning on her heel, she locked eyes with Detective Pretty Boy himself.

“Detective Thawne!” Lisa called, rounding the corner. She huffed out a breath, winded. There were tears in her eyes, snot on her chin. It was heartbreaking. “What happened to Barry? Was he outside? Was he in an accident? Is anyone else—”

“Slow down, Lise,” Iris told her, putting an arm around her. “Let him get a word in.” She turned to Eddie. “Detective? What happened to Barry?”

“Struck by lightning.”

“Where is my dad? And Len?”

“Detective Snart was injured, he’s on his way to the hospital now via ambulance. Detective West is with him. They're probably here already.”

Lisa nodded up at her sister, sobbing. “Iris—Ir—Iris—you sh—should have seen him. Len—Lenny is—he’s just—There’s so much ice—it isn’t even th—that cold out I don’t—”

Iris squeezed her shoulder. “Shhh, Lisa,” she said gently. “It’s gonna be okay.” She looked at Eddie. “Was anyone else at the precinct hurt?”

“Everyone is relatively fine, though some were knocked unconscious by the blast. They’ve all woken up by now. Detective Chyre was shot in the line of duty, he’s in rough shape, and he’s in another ambulance on his way here. Vukovich is with him.”

“Detective Chyre, my dad, Lenny, and Vukovich were all across town working a case.”

“Yes.”

Iris nodded. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Do you think Barry will be okay?”

“I—”

“Please, Detective. I’d like your opinion.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “He was in bad shape when I found him. He made it this far, though.”

She nodded. “You’re right. He made it this far. When—” Her question was cut off as the doors at the other end of the hall flew open again.

“Male victim, mid-late-twenties. Concussive wound to the head, broken leg.”

The paramedics were blocking their view of the person on the gurney, but they could all see—steam?—rising from behind them. They were all pale, shivering.

The EMT leading the procession ran straight into a doctor, who blocked her way. “Concussion, broken leg? Take him to the OR, get him in a cast and give him some medication for the pain. We have too many—”

“I think you’ll want to see this one, Doc,” the medic said, stepping out of the way.

The other EMTs followed her lead, scurrying away from the stretcher to reveal—

“Len,” Iris breathed. The tears she had held in over Barry sprung up, and she tore down the hall, shoving past the detective. Lisa was right on her heels, and they both skidded to a stop by their brother.

Lisa’s sob was almost blood-curdling in its volume. “Lenny…Iris—Iris, why is this h— _happening_?”

“Shh, shh,” she choked out. “It’s—it’s okay…” She wiped her nose, looking at the lead medic. “What…What happened to him?”

At her side, Lisa was blubbering, gurgling soft words to Len that no one could really understand.

(“Lenny.” A sob. “No, you—you _have_ to wake _up_ , what—” A sniffle. “You need to wake up, we can’t—we can’t do this without you. B—Barry needs you, I—”)

“Miss,” the doctor said calmly, “I’m going to have to ask you to step away.”

“No!” Iris bit harshly. Her lips were already turning blue, just standing next to Len. “He’s my brother! I deserve answers.”

“He needs medical attention—”

The doctor cut the lead paramedic off again, scoffing. “He’s practically frozen! What are we supposed to do to help him now? Take him away. Miss, come with me. I—”

“Sir,” the medic said sternly, leaning in to talk to him. “This man isn’t dead.”

Finally, _finally_ , the doctor caught sight of the monitors hooked up to Len.

One of the other EMTs spoke up. “Heart rate is slow but steady, his pupils are fully responsive, and his nerves respond to stimuli. We took some blood before—before his skin froze over, and his blood is moving slowly and kind of—well, it’s sort of—”

“His blood is freezing,” the lead stated flatly. “It’s circulating, his heart is beating, he’s breathing fine, but his blood is half frozen.”

“What do you mean his skin froze over?” Iris asked, edging away from Lisa and closer to the medic, unwilling to miss a thing.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I can’t—”

“I’ll remind you, that’s my brother on that bed,” Iris intoned. “Not to mention the fact that I have his power of attorney, should he be incapacitated. So, as I’ve said, I think I deserve some answers.”

Sighing, the lady took out a needle, positioning it above the frozen man’s wrist. When she went to put it in the vein, it just chipped off the skin, covering itself in frost before shattering completely. “See?”

Lisa whimpered, leaning on the gurney’s rail for support. “Will he—will he get better?”

The doctor just looked at them sadly before gesturing for the medics to follow him.

Len disappeared into an OR.

“Alright, Detective Thawne.” The three of them turned, startled. Joe West stood by the hall’s entrance, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. “Where is my son?”


	4. Chapter Three

Len was cold.

Had he forgotten his jacket in the car? Where had his gloves gone? He’d been wearing them a second ago—he _never_ handled his firearm without gloves on, _especially_ in the winter. It was winter, right? Yes, December—

Why was he so _cold_?

Groaning, he tried sitting up. He heard cracks—probably from his spine being in an uncomfortable position for so long. He knew that was a—

—Or. It could be the _ice that was surrounding him right now_.

“What the—”

He was in a hospital room. Which was weird, since he didn’t remember going to the hospital.

Even weirder, the whole room was covered in frost. Including his own body. No wonder he was so cold.

Curiously, he scraped at the frost covering his skin. It brushed off easily, revealing his normal skin beneath. He moved to scrape the rest off, but rolled his eyes when an IV prevented much movement.

Instead of moving, he glanced around the rest of the room. A lot of the frost was receding—he wondered what the deal was with that—and he could see through the window that it was a sunny day outside. There wasn’t really anything in the room to indicate others had been in here, except for a (frozen) cup of coffee and a gold parka tossed across one of the bedside chairs. _Joe and Lisa_ . A book sat on the table by the chair— _Tales of the Weird and Unexplained_.

It was bookmarked near the end.

Sighing, he hit the call button on the wall, then grabbed the novel, flipping to the last page he remembered reading.

Twelve-point-eight seconds later, when he was halfway through his second page, a nurse appeared in the doorway, looking startled.

Len smirked over at her. “Hiya. Do you know where my dad is?”

* * *

It took Len eleven days to wake up.

Actually, it’d more accurate to say that it took him eleven days to start to _defrost_. He didn’t actually _wake up_ for another three days.

Lisa was inconsolable. Barry kept having heart attacks, kept _dying_ , and her big brother was trapped in an ice cube, completely unreachable. Lenny was always a little out there, a little hard to reach, but he was always there when they _needed_ him.

They needed him now, and he was stuck in a coma. Just like Barry.

Iris would have given anything for another one of Barry’s sunny smiles, or even one of Len’s horrid puns. Really, they were terrible.

She missed laughing. It’d only been a week.

The day before Len started defrosting, Barry had had fifty-six heart attacks.

People from the precinct had been in and out all day. A few visited Barry, but most just stood outside and watched sadly while doctors saved him over and over again. Barry’s room had a hundred bouquets scattered around.

Most of the visiting officers stopped by Len’s room. Some were shocked by his frozen body.

The doctors didn’t know what to make of it; he was completely frozen, no blood rising in his skin, waves of cold instead of warmth flowing out from him. There was frost on the windows, the heater kept steaming from the condensation, and one of the monitors had icicles on it.

Nobody left flowers for Len—they would’ve died in seconds.

The only reason Len was in a hospital room and not the morgue was that, when they’d first arrived to find him partially frozen, EMTs had been able to detect a heartbeat. It was faint, barely there, but it was a _heartbeat_ in a _frozen body_.

It was a miracle.

Len was frozen—his _blood_ was frozen—yet his heart still beat, his lungs still took in air. Needles bounced off of his skin.

He was encased in ice for _two weeks_.

And then he woke up.

And Barry didn’t.

* * *

Doctors were completely baffled.

Len had gone from pseudo-icicle to a fully-functioning human being in a matter of hours. No signs of frostbite, hypothermia, or even unnatural blood clotting. There weren’t any signs whatsoever that he’d been frozen at all.

It was weird.

Given what they’d been seeing over the last few days, though…they left him alone. For now.

* * *

It took Len almost an hour to ask.

Joe had been the first to show up, after the doctors had done their tests. He was just— _there_ , suddenly.

“I almost didn’t believe ‘em, when they told me,” he’d said with a chuckle, clapping a hand over Len’s shoulder. “Glad to see you back in the land of the livin’, Son.”

Lisa and Iris had been next, tackling him back onto the bed. “Lenny!” they’d both cried happily. “You’re awake!” And then they’d both _actually_ started crying.

Singh had shown up at one point, looking at him sadly, which confused him a little. But the captain said he was glad he was awake. “I hope you’ll be back to work soon. As good as Vukovich and the others are, with the loss of Chyre for the foreseeable future and this horrible increase in crime in the city, I don’t think I can stand another week of this insanity without my two best detectives.” Then he’d paused, looking at them sternly. “But I never told you that. Don’t let it go to your heads.”

After he’d left, Len and Joe had shared a look. “He loves us,” they’d said simultaneously.

Looking around, he finally noticed.

“Where’s Barry?”

Being the _top detective_ that he was, he didn’t miss the looks his family shared.

“He’s here, Len,” Joe said.

“He is? Why hasn’t he come to see me?”

Iris hesitated before smiling. “Why don’t we all go see him? I’m sure he could use the company.”

And so they all took the trip down to Barry’s hospital room, Joe pushing Len in a wheelchair that _really isn’t necessary, come on, Dad, I wanna stretch my legs a little_ , and Iris and Lisa trailing beside them.

Len was asking about Chyre as they rolled through the halls, and Joe affirmed that he was fine. “Damn good thing Clyde is a shit shot, though. Bullet just grazed his shoulder. He’ll be out for a couple of months for rehab, but…”

He trailed off as Len gasped. They were at Barry's door.

Len gazed at all the flowers lining the tables, walls, crammed into corners of the floor.

“Some of these are actually for you,” Lisa chirped, already across the room and hopping up onto Barry’s bed.

Barry’s bed, where the scrawny kid he’d known for the majority of his _life_ lay _unconscious_ , dead to the world.

Iris continued Lisa’s statement when no one said anything. “Yeah, but your room was kind of hostile to plants, so we just put everything in here. Besides, Barry was always more of a flower person than you.”

“What happened?” Len whispered. Joe pushed him further into the room, right up next to the bed. Not even thinking about it, he grasped Barry’s hand in his. It was scaldingly warm in his cold palm, but he held on until they felt the same temperature.

“The particle accelerator exploded. Barry was struck by lightning that night. He’s been asleep ever since,” Lisa said quietly.

He glanced over at her. She looked hesitant.

“And?” he prompted.

“H—He’s in rough shape,” Iris murmured. She was holding Barry’s other hand, smoothing his hair from his eyes. “He keeps—just—he just keeps _dying_ ,” she said. Her voice broke at the end. “His heart has stopped eight-hundred-and-thirty-nine times since he was struck, and—I—nobody knows what—” She stopped, taking long, heaving breaths.

Len’s own throat caught, but he reached out to her, grabbing at her elbow. “Hey. Look at me.” She did, her eyes still glassy. “Iry,” he said softly. “Barry is _gonna_ make it. He’s strong. Sometimes I think he’s stronger than anyone I’ve ever known. He’ll make it. I woke up, right? He will, too.” He gripped the man’s hand tighter. “He _has_ to.”

“Yeah,” Iris whispered. She leaned over to kiss Barry’s forehead. “He has to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I had somebody point out how many times Barry's heart stopped, so I thought I'd explain.
> 
> I basically picked a randomly high number (high meaning above six hundred), then did the math in my head.
> 
> There are 336 hours in two weeks. That means Barry's heart stops about three times an hour. But that's just an average. The first few days, his heart was stopping almost twenty times an hour. As the days passed, the attacks gradually slowed from twenty per hour to ten to five to two to one. However, this gradual slowing is NOT an indication that the attacks will stop anytime soon, because any time anyone thinks this the attacks just start increasing in number.
> 
> The reason behind this slowing (and the attacks in general) lies within Barry. He's a) not fully connected to the speed force (because he hasn't come into direct contact to another speed force conduit) and b) unconscious (because he was struck by a literally lightning bolt). He has zero control over his body and it's reactions, so he can't exercise any sort of control on himself to calm down.
> 
> I'm not sure if this explanation and description makes any sense, but it's my opinion and it explains it just a little.
> 
> Happy reading!!


	5. Chapter Four

With Chyre out of commission for the next however many months, Joe got a new partner.

Len didn’t like him.

It wasn’t that he had any _reason_ not to like him—on the contrary, the guy seemed pretty decent when they’d met.

But that was supposed to be _Len’s_ job. _He_ was supposed to be out there with Joe, as partners in detection. It was what he’d always hoped for.

But _no_. Instead, Detective Pretty Boy got to go out with Joe on patrol and solve crimes and whatever, and he was stuck with Vukovich. Don’t get him wrong, Vukovich was really great—he was actually one of the only people he knew who really got his jokes. He was great.

Len wanted to be _Joe’s_ partner, though.

(He was _not_ pouting. Shut up, Lisa.)

It didn’t really matter, in the end—Joe hardly ever went to work, anyway. Thawne covered most of his shifts, sometimes so Joe could get some rest in, most of the time so Joe and Iris could both be there for Barry. Lisa was already set up in a corner of Barry’s hospital room.

Len only managed to visit in the early mornings before his shift and sometimes on the weekends. He wished it was more, but Singh was insistent that he couldn’t afford to let two of his detectives out of work for that long. He didn’t have the manpower. Len understood. Really, he did. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

At least Lisa seemed to dislike Thawne just as much as Len did.

That was probably mostly due to the fact that Iris had taken a shining to him lately. They didn’t have long conversations, and they weren’t dating, but Iris at least made an effort to talk to him whenever they were in the same room.

(Perhaps this was a family trait, their reasoning for disliking Detective Pretty Boy, because while Lisa grumbled about how _cozy_ the two of them seemed, Len seethed every time Thawne brought up Barry and _I hope he gets better soon_ and _I only really talked to him a little_ and _he seems pretty cool_ and _he’s lucky to have his family supporting him like you all do_. Honestly, with the downright…disgustingly affectionate voice Thawne used when talking to Iris or about Barry or to Iris about Barry, you’d think they were all dating or something.)

* * *

It was almost six weeks after the accelerator blew, and they’d all fallen into their own patterns.

Len got up early every morning so he could pick up Iris and take her to work at Jitters. She would have driven herself, but she didn’t like being alone even for a five-minute drive—besides, her car was malfunctioning or something, probably totaled at this point, and they’d had it hauled off from the hospital parking lot. Barry’s emergency box had been pulled out and brought into his hospital room.

Len would be Iris’s first customer, grabbing a coffee to go and heading to the hospital. He’d sit with Barry and Lisa for half an hour—just long enough to finish his coffee and read a chapter of a book to Barry’s sleeping form—then head to work himself. If he had the day off—a rare occurrence, since he’d been picking up extra shifts, both to help with hospital bills and just to help out around the city (and keep himself distracted)—he’d just go to the hospital and stay there all day, playing one-person games of chess and trying to imagine what moves Barry would make and what he’d say whenever he won or lost a round.

Iris started her day in much the same way—early, and with a cup of coffee. She’d work until around two in the afternoon, then spend the rest of the day with Barry before going home to bed so she could start over the next day.

When Joe was forced to work, he’d throw himself into it so forcefully it scared everyone around him. He arrived at work at the same time as Len on those mornings, and they made an intimidating pair as they entered the building with stern faces. Most days, though, Joe would go straight to the hospital.

No one was really sure how she’d managed it, but Lisa had yet to be kicked out of Barry’s room. She had her emergency suitcase hidden under his bed, and luckily for her, Barry’s bathroom had a shower in it, so she was pretty set. She hadn’t left the hospital since the day of the explosion; she slept on a bumpy cot spread over Barry’s trunk. The nurses were pretty nice to her.

They’d come in at seven every morning, right before Len showed up with his coffee and book, and they’d smile and hand her a juice box.

“How are you today, Lisa?” they’d ask as they scribbled Barry’s vitals down. “Any weirdos come in last night?”

“I’m good,” she’d drawl with a yawn. “Nah, it was a pretty slow night ‘round here. Coupl’a friends from High School swung by, but Barry was feeling pretty talkative, I guess. They left pretty fast after that.”

This was one of the running gags she had with the nurses—they’d say that Barry was _talkative_ when he’d have little heart murmurs. The doctors weren’t in on it, too stuffy for that, but Lisa had fun with the other staff.

They never joked when the heart murmurs turned into cardiac arrest. Ever. That wasn’t funny. Any of those heart attacks could be the end of Barry.

But those times when Barry’s heart would speed up and then slow down—oh, it was always fun when newbies would hear it for the first time and freak out.

“You know,” Lisa told a nurse one morning. “I’m already twenty. Little old for juice boxes, don’t you think?”

The nurse—Jack—just smiled at her. “Sorry, kiddo. Iris insists—no coffee.”

Lisa pouted, taking another pull from her juice. “Iris needs to mind her own damn business,” she sulked. Jack laughed.

Lisa’s favorite nurse was named Claudia. She was nice—she always had candy stuck in her pockets.

Claudia was there whenever Barry went into cardiac arrest, to guide Lisa out of the room and into the waiting area. She always made sure Lisa had a blanket and a flashlight, since the power in the hospital kept going out.

As long as it’d been since the particle accelerator exploded, the hospital was having a lot of electrical issues. The power went out at least three times a day, if not more—and Barry almost always started crashing during those times, which made everything so much more complicated.

The doctors had brought in special equipment to the hospital, so that if any patients crashed they could get everything back up and running without the building’s electricity. A lot of resources were being thrown into keeping Barry stable, but even Lisa knew that eventually they were going to run out of money and—

What was going to happen to Barry when that happened?

* * *

“Hey, Lenny,” Lisa said with a smile. Hopping off Barry’s bed, she gave him a hug. “Do you work today?”

He ruffled her hair. “Hey, kiddo. No, Singh gave me the day off so I could come down here for…for Bear’s…”

“Yeah,” she muttered, already sitting back down, Leaning forward, she pulled her suitcase out from under the bed, opening it. On top of her clothes was a gold package. “I got him a present. I was planning to visit for Winter Break anyway—the week of Christmas until Valentine’s Day, just like always—so it was already packed away in my E-Bag.”

Len grinned, pulling a present of his own out. “Yeah, I got one, too.” He laid down on her cot, kicking his feet up and tossing the red package between his hands. “Dad and Iris should be coming around lunchtime, so we’ll all be together for today.”

Lisa stayed silent, still looking at the present in her bag.

“Lise?”

“I should have wrapped it in red,” she blurted quietly. “Red’s his favorite color, it’s always his favorite color. Why didn’t I wrap it in red? Gold’s _my_ favorite color—why should it be in my favorite color? I—”

“Lisa,” Len said softly. She looked up. “It’s okay. Barry wouldn’t mind.”

She sniffed, looking away again. “It’s not like he’d actually tell me, anyway.”

He sighed. “Lisa.”

Lisa stood up, yanking on her curls—they were darker now than they had been when she was younger, more of a shimmering brunette color than wheat blond. She pulled all of her hair up, up into a tight but messy bun. As she disappeared into the bathroom connected to the hospital room, Len could hear water running, then soft splashing noises.

She came back rubbing a towel over her face. Most of her makeup was gone when she removed the cloth, and she grimaced at the mascara smudges.

“Damn. It took me forty minutes to get that wing right.”

Len raised a brow.

“Oh, shut up. I always work extra hard on my makeup when I’m stressed, you know that.”

He chuckled. “That I do.”

Lisa tossed the towel back into the bathroom. “Anyway,” she sighed, sitting on the edge of Barry’s bed. Her eyes lingered on his sleeping face as she spoke. “I guess I was hoping he’d wake up while I was fixing everything.”

Len sighed. “He hasn’t any other day, Lise.”

“So?” she snapped, whipping around on him. “So what? If there was ever a day I thought he’d—”

She stopped, sniffed. Her gaze softened as it went back to Barry, and she reached over to run a hand over his hair. It was getting longer now, slowly but surely, and she briefly contemplated eventually asking to cut it.

“It should be his birthday,” she muttered. “If he was gonna wake up, it should be his birthday.”

Len sighed again, swinging himself up to stand. Hesitating, he finally sat just behind his sister, a hand on her shoulder. “I know, kid.”

“He didn’t even _twitch_ on Christmas, I thought maybe…”

“I know.”

Lisa sighed. “I wish he’d wake up already.” She brought Barry’s hand up to her cheek. “I wish he was here.”

Len just watched the two of them sadly. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I know.”

It wasn’t until well after noon that day that Joe and Iris showed up. Iris’ eyes were red, her nose puffy.

She smiled when she saw Lisa sprawled across her cot, dead asleep. “Rough morning?”

Len looked up from his book, smiling. “It was,” he drawled as he stood. “Hey, Iry.”

“Hey, Lenny.” Iris accepted a kiss to her cheek before skipping over to place one on Barry’s. “Barry.”

“Dad.”

“Len.”

“So, Lenny,” Iris started, stealing his seat. “What’d we miss?”

He shrugged. “Lisa was just really hoping today would be the day.”

Iris looked sad. “Yeah.” Her eyes flickered to Barry. “Anything happen with him?”

“Been pretty quiet, actually. Hardly a murmur all morning. Lise talked to him for a while, but she fell asleep over an hour ago, and there hasn’t really been any other noise around here since. I read him a chapter of the book he likes so much, and there was a…” He twiddled his fingers. “…a flutter. Other than that, though, nothing. It’s been almost too quiet.”

Joe took a seat on the edge of Lisa’s bed, pulling her blanket up over her shoulders and running a hand over her hair. “Why was Lisa so upset today?” he asked. “Other than…”

Len sighed, rubbing at his eyes in frustration. “It started before I got here. She just—it’s different, for her. Sometimes I think Barry is more of a rock for her than I am, and that makes this…I don’t—” He breathed heavily, and Iris reached up to grasp his hand. “She wants him to wake up more than anything. She refuses to go back to school until he’s better, she barely sleeps, barely _eats_ , because she’s busy watching him while everyone else goes home. She got upset this morning because she hoped today would be the day—she spent an hour on her makeup because she hoped he’d wake up eventually.

“Later, when I—” He huffed a laugh. “When I got here, she just lost it over Barry’s birthday gift.”

“Why’s that?” Iris murmured.

Len shook his head. “She wrapped it in gold and not in red.” He nodded toward the presents sitting by the bed. “Started going on about how selfish that was,” he sighed. “Like Barry would care.”

Iris smiled sadly. “He really wouldn’t.”

“I know.”

It was quiet for a moment as Lisa shifted in her sleep.

Once she settled, Len sighed again. “I’m worried about her.”

“We all are, Lenny,” Iris hummed. “I’m pretty sure if Barry was seeing this, he’d have already panicked at _least_ three times by now.”

Len snorted. “Maybe that’s what all those heart murmurs are about—panicking.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Len,” Joe warned.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t joke, I know,” Len drawled.

He glanced over Barry—he looked so much younger asleep, more like the kid Len always saw him as. His face was so thin, his jaw gaunt, but he was smiling so peacefully, just like he used to when he fell asleep at the park when they were growing up. They were all still growing up, really. That’s what made this all so sad.

Barry _should_ have had a normal life, shouldn’t have felt pressured to graduate early just because he could. He shouldn’t have been bullied so much as a kid and then as a college student. He _should_ have enjoyed his high school popularity instead of looking over his shoulder every second. He _should’ve_ still been in college, working through his second degree and partying with friends _his age_. He _should_ have had a better job, at the very least, rather than some stupid assistant CSI job. He was so much better already than the lead CSIs. Definitely good enough to not be taunted every single day at work. He _should_ have had a girlfriend or boyfriend or _someone_ to care about and to care for him like his family can’t.

Barry should have had a lot of things he never got. And it was terrifying to think he might never get them.

Len tried not to dwell on that too much. Instead, he overcompensated by worrying about everything else.

How Iris was doing at school. Making sure she was safe at work as long as he was there.

Making sure Lisa kept up with her exercises—even though she was taking a break, she had to keep her body strong for when she inevitably returned to dancing. It was her dream, and he wasn’t going to let her waste it all because she was a little down.

He especially had to keep an eye on Joe.

Dad had been a rock for all of them. He always had been. He was their protector, their moral compass when even Barry strayed. He was their punisher when things got rough.

But Len had already caught him three times crying at Barry’s bedside. Generally, it happened at that weird part of the day when nothing seemed to be happening. All the doctors and nurses were elsewhere, Lisa was out on her jog, and nothing was really happening at the station. It happened more than you’d think.

Usually, Len didn’t have the time to go all the way to the hospital, but on a few rare occasions, he reached the door as Joe talked to Barry. It was a quiet noise, like when he use to tell Lisa bedtime stories after she had a nightmare, like he didn’t want to scare the one laying in the bed. But it was also rough, worn out. Tired, defeated, a million other adjectives that all meant the same thing.

The first time it happened, Len got the feeling this was a regular thing, that maybe Dad waited until just the right time of day to let everything out. The other two times, he was sure.

Len left him alone, stopped coming by at those times. He never brought it up. He was scared that if he ever did, it would send the man spiraling.

They were all ripping themselves apart with this grief, and Len couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take for something to give way.


	6. Chapter Five

It was April.

 _April_.

Nothing much had changed.

It was about to.

* * *

_April 10th, 2014_

Iris sat by Barry’s bedside all day, going through everyone’s finances. Tax day was near, and she’d be lucky if she got everything in on time. Usually, she didn’t wait until last minute, but this year had been so hectic she forgot.

She sat on Lisa’s cot, reclining against the wall with papers and forms scattered around her and her large tax binder propped up on her lap. Lisa had only let her borrow the bed because she had to go back to school for a couple of days to check in. (Len had insisted after the fourth call threatening the termination of her enrollment.)

Iris was pretty much doing everyone’s paperwork this year. Hers, her dad’s, Lisa’s, Len’s. She’d even asked a few doctors if Barry had to do taxes, and they’d said that since he didn’t seem to be waking up before they were due, he could get away with filing late—a.k.a. whenever he woke up—but she figured she might as well do them, anyway. She’d have to get everyone together to sign off on everything and fill out the stuff she didn’t know (which wasn’t much), but she could do everything else herself. Barry was probably the most organized of all of them, though you couldn’t tell by looking at his workspace, and the fact that he had given Iris power of attorney helped a lot.

She’d known for years that she had Barry’s power of attorney—he’d signed the papers the week after she turned eighteen. Iris, of course, hadn’t expected to ever have to use it, but at least it was convenient. She had Len’s, too. Len had Lisa’s and Dad’s. Dad had hers. Barry had insisted everyone be prepared for anything, though everyone had secretly agreed that neither Barry nor Lisa would be able to handle the emotional turmoil of having someone's life in their hands, so they didn't have any of the rest of theirs. If they were all somehow hurt at the same time, the rights went to Captain Singh.

It wasn’t easy to do everyone’s taxes by herself, but she powered through as best she could. She had the easiest schedule and the best brain at this point, so she was the best option.

Lisa had no clue how to do taxes, and every time anyone tried to teach her, she got bored and fell asleep. Lately, they just let it go. She needed her sleep.

Her Dad was already a wreck without having to worry about taxes, and whenever he pulled himself out of that head-space he was always working too hard. Even with his partner, Eddie Thawne, taking on most of his shifts so he could stay with Barry, he was still busy. He didn’t have time.

Len was _always_ working. He sometimes worked twenty-hour shifts back to back to back, running himself into the ground just trying to get any extra overtime possible. Plus, he was almost always on call even if he was supposed to be sleeping. Iris offered to do his stuff for him, since he needed sleep, but he insisted he was fine. Which was totally okay with her, until she came over to his place with coffee and muffins to find him passed out cold over a table full of paperwork. She’d just sighed and woke him up, dragging him up from the table as he protested in a voice that was still mostly asleep. Sitting him down on his bed, she’d stripped him of his jacket and badge, helped him out of his tie and shoes, and covered him with a blanket. He was out again in seconds. She’d then stolen his phone and called Captain Singh.

He’d sighed. “Tell him to get some _real_ rest, would you? And not that ‘I-only-need-four-hours-I’m-fine-I-just-need-coffee’ crap he’s bee giving everyone for the last four months. He’s not allowed back for the rest of the week.”

“Will do.”

Singh had paused. “How is he?” he’d asked quietly. “Barry, I mean?”

“No change,” she’d reported sadly. “He’s not having as many attacks, but he’s not getting much better other than that.”

The police captain had given his condolences, hanging up quickly after. That had been Tuesday.

The guys at the station were still pretty shaken up about Barry, according to Len and Dad. It broker her heart a little.

* * *

_April 11th_

Eddie felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned, already talking a mile a minute. “Hey, Captain, I was just headed out to check on—”

He cut himself off, noticing the woman in front of him.

“Hello, Detective.”

“Iris,” he spluttered. “What are you doing here? Looking for your dad? He’s not—”

“Here,” she cut in. “I know. He’s at the hospital. I was looking for you, actually.”

“Oh. Uh…Why, exactly?”

Iris glanced away for a second, frowning, before looking back at him. “I just…wanted to thank you. For helping my dad. I know you’ve been taking on his shifts so he could be at the hospital the last few months, and I’m grateful.”

Eddie smiled. “No problem. No, really. What are partners for, right?”

She shrugged. “I guess. But, anyway, thanks.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Well, I’ll let you get going,” she said, stepping away. “Wherever you need to be. But, uh, let me thank you with a cup of coffee? I mean, the stuff at the hospital is disgusting—I would know, I’ve been stuck drinking it the last couple of days since I was stuck babysitting Bear and doing everybody’s taxes—and I can’t imagine station coffee being all that much better. I know a place. Not Jitters, either, I swear.”

Eddie scratched the back of his neck, shrugging. “Sure? I could go for a coffee.”

“Okay,” she drawled. It sounded a lot like her brother. “So, tonight?”

“Sure.”

* * *

_April 14th_

Len glared at Iris over the top of his coffee.

Without looking up from her schoolwork, she quipped, “Stop looking at me like that, it was for your own good.”

“You told my _boss_ on me?”

She hummed. “Eh, more like he told on you to me, if you’re thinking like that. But yes, I spoke with David—we are on very good terms, I think—and we both agreed that you’re running yourself into the ground and needed a break.”

Len huffed. “Whatever. I’m going back today.”

“Mmhmm, and we better not have to do this again.” She sipped at her coffee. “What’s a good synonym for bitter?”

Len stayed silent.

“Lenny,” Iris whined. “Come _on_. I need to finish this.” She pouted.

In Len’s defense, he lasted a whole minute this time. Eventually, though, he sighed.

“What’s the context?”

* * *

_April 17th_

“Detective Joe West? Miss Iris West?”

Both turned; Joe had to quickly set his coffee down to avoid spilling it. A man rolled into the hospital room.

Joe cleared his throat. “Who—”

“Doctor Harrison Wells,” the man said. He shifted in his wheelchair, coming closer. “I have a…proposition for you. It’s about Mr. Allen there.” He nodded toward the man in the bed. “I believe we can help him.”

“We,” Joe said slowly. “And who, exactly, is we?”

Wells turned his head, calling out, “Caitlin? Come in, please.”

From around the corner, a woman appeared, holding a tablet. “Dr. Wells?”

“Caitlin, meet Detective Joe West, Barry Allen’s surrogate father, and Iris, his…sister. Detective, Ma’am, this is Doctor Caitlin Snow, part of my team.”

“It’s wonderful to meet you, Detective,” Caitlin said calmly, reaching out to shake his hand. She turned to the other woman in the room. “Iris.”

“Doctor,” Joe said hesitantly. He cast a look at his daughter, but she stayed silent. “Would either of you like to explain how you think you can help my son?”

Wells pushed his glasses up, grimacing. “Yes, well. We believe we know what is triggering your son’s, er, attacks.”

Now Iris scoffed, crossing her arms. “Uh-huh. And you…What? Want to treat him? And how much will that cost us? More than the hospital, I’m guessing.”

Dr. Snow shook her head. “We wouldn’t charge anything. In fact, this is sort of—” She paused, started again. “Well, this is sort of us trying to help the city.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It wouldn’t cost anything? Sure, because that doesn’t sound suspicious at _all_.”

Wells sighed. “Just let us show you. Then you can make a decision.”

Both Wests watched him closely for a moment, then turned to Snow.

“Alright,” Joe drawled. “We’ll hear you out.”

Caitlin nodded, stepping forward and turning on her tablet. She turned so they were both looking at it. “Alright. Mr. Allen’s heart is normally beating at what we see as a steady pace. It’s beating at the same pace as a normal twenty-something’s heart. But then—”

She was cut off by a loud screeching sound coming from Barry’s bedside.

Joe and Iris both whipped around, almost in tandem. In the course of the next few seconds, many things happened.

First, Barry seemed to stay completely still, but still breathing, despite the fact that his heartbeat on the monitor was shifting from erratic to flat-lining back to erratic.

Secondly, Wells and Snow simultaneously sighed. Wells rubbed a hand over his face while Snow threw her hands in the air in frustration.

And lastly, doctors swarmed the room, pushing everyone this way and that to get to Barry.

As the chaos settled in, the heart monitor began fizzing and seemed to short-circuit. Doctors were shouting and calling for different things.

Then someone shouted, “Clear!”

In the next second, Caitlin was rushing forward. “No!” she shouted.

But it was too late. They shocked Barry. The hospital went dark. They shocked him again. Outside, the surrounding buildings seemed to be cloaked in shadow.

Iris watched Snow try to fight off the doctors closest to Barry. She seemed desperate to stop them.

She made a decision. “Everybody, stop!” she screeched.

The lead doctor paused just before shocking Barry, looking up. “Ma’am—”

She sighed. “I’m calling a DNR.”

“Iris!” Joe spluttered.

“I’m calling it,” she snapped. “Give me the paperwork. _Now_.”

“But—”

“You heard me!”

Everyone stopped moving.

“Everyone out, please,” Iris sighed, sniffling. “We need to be alone with him right now.”

One doctor attempted to take a time of death notice, but Caitlin grabbed the sheet from him. “He’s not dead, idiot,” she snapped lowly. “I’ll fill it out when it’s time.”

Her icy glare was enough to have everyone rushing out of the room much faster.

The power flickered back on. Barry’s heart monitor struck up a steady beeping once again.

Joe slumped in a nearby chair. “What the hell is happening.”

Looking up, he saw Caitlin plugging her tablet into Barry’s monitor. She tapped a few buttons and hummed in satisfaction.

“I _knew_ it!” she cheered.

“What are you doing, Doctor?” Iris asked quietly. She clasped Barry’s hand in hers.

Caitlin handed the tablet over. “I downloaded the history of the machine, at least as much as I could. And as long as this monitor is plugged in, we can see what's _really_ happening with  Barry’s heart.” Reaching over, she pressed rewind, then play. Then she motioned Joe over to see, too. “Watch.”

So they watched. They watched in awe as Barry’s heart continued in a steady rhythm for a moment before speeding up to a ridiculous speed.

“Is this real?” Joe muttered.

Wells nodded. “It’s in real time. Your son isn’t dying, Detective. His heart is moving faster than we or the machines can detect.” He flicked a warning look at Caitlin. "It's...not uncommon, among lightning victims, and it generally goes away after a while, but it isn't common enough that every institution had the resources to treat it. We do."

* * *

_April 18th_

Len scowled, slamming his book shut. “Absolutely not.”

The five of them—Joe, Iris, Len, Lisa, and Doctor Snow—were at Joe’s house, sitting around the dining room table. Iris and Joe had had a long discussion the day before, and they’d agreed to have a family meeting on the subject, with Caitlin there as a reference.

It would be nice if everyone agreed, though Joe had reluctantly acknowledged that Iris could do whatever she deemed right.

Lisa had gotten on board right away, desperate for anything that could save Barry or help him wake up.

But it had been three hours already, and Len wasn’t budging.

Joe sighed. “Son—”

“No, Dad. We can’t do this. We don’t even know them! How are we supposed to trust them?” He glowered at Caitlin, but she met his glance head-on. “Their stupid machine has wrecked the city. It made Barry get struck by lightning! They’ve ruined lives.”

“Lenny!” Lisa chastised. “That’s not—”

Caitlin cut her off. “No, Lisa, your brother is right.” She looked at Len, squaring her shoulders. “Mr. Snart, you’re right. STAR Labs _has_ ruined lives. But you have to look at this from a scientific point of view—there are always variables a scientist has to watch out for, things they can’t control. We didn’t know the particle accelerator would explode and hurt so many. Barry didn’t know he was going to get struck by lightning. No one could have predicted any of this happening."

She sighed. “At the same time, we also have to look at this practically. We all know that your family can’t afford to keep paying Barry’s hospital bills. We _also_ know that Barry’s best chance of waking up is to have competent doctors that can put all of their attention on him for as long as he needs. He needs to have full-time, high-class care. We can give that to him." She folded her hands. “Dr. Wells and I, as well as our other teammate, Cisco, have been working to find the cause for Barry’s continued coma, and we are very close to figuring this all out. It would be easier to do so if we could observe Barry constantly."

Caitlin cleared her throat. “Besides, this is also a way to help the city.” Len raised a brow. “I’m sure you’ve noticed all the power outages in the last four months? They aren’t due to any specific injury to the city’s infrastructure—in fact, everything has been mostly fixed already. It’s Barry. Or, rather, his attacks. They’re causing it, and the blackouts won’t stop until Barry is removed. His continued stay is putting countless other patients in harm’s way, not to mention other citizens of Central."

Iris was nodding along, shooting pleading glances at Len—but when Caitlin paused, a few of her words caught up with her.

"Wait,” she blurted, surprised. “Did you say Cisco?"

The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Yes, our other teammate. Cisco Ramon specializes in—"

"Bio-engineering and physics?” Len snorted. Then he groaned. “Shit.” He leant his elbow on the table, rubbing a hand over his face. “What the hell did you get yourself into, kid.” It wasn't a question.

“Uh—”

*Iris rolled her eyes. “¿Puedes realmente culparlo? Estoy seguro de que Cisco estaba tan emocionado como Barry por el Acelerado de Partículas.”

“Eso no significa que el tipo tenga que ser un idiota,” he snapped back at her, glaring over his hand. “Tch. Lo siguiente que sabemos es que Hartley estará allí.”

Caitlin startled, her eyes wide. “¿Conoces a Hartley también? Eso es bastante extraño.”

Iris grinned. “Sure do. Nice Spanish, by the way. Your accent is nice.”

“Thank you.” Her brow scrunched. “So you know Cisco and Hartley, but didn’t know that either of them were working at STAR?”

Len cursed. “I guess not.” He sighed, mumbling something. “Alright. Are they still there?”

“Cisco is. Hartley…left over a year ago,” Caitlin said softly.

“What happened?” Len asked, his voice sharp.

She shrugged. “Dr. Wells stated creative differences, but Cisco and I couldn’t agree on whether that meant Hartley was a dick or Dr. Wells didn’t like his idea and decided to cut his losses. Especially give the fact that the timing was really suspicious. Hartley was fired less than a month after Cisco was hired.”

Lisa frowned, looking up from her phone. “That does sound a little suspicious.” Her eyes shifted to Iris, and she smiled cutely. “Iry, Claudia says hi. And she told me she’ll give me coffee next time.” She stuck her tongue out.

“You shouldn’t drink coffee, Lise, it’s bad for you.”

“You drink it all the time! You _work_ at a coffee _shop_!”

“I’m not an athlete, now am I? No coffee.”

Lisa pouted. “Whatever. By the way, how are you so good at Spanish? You haven’t spoken it in years.”

“That you know of,” Iris told her, ruffling her hair. “Jealous, huh?”

“You should teach me. My French and Russian are pretty good—my Latin and Arabic are better—but I suck at Spanish.”

“Latin is a dead language,” Len droned. “Why you chose to learn _that_ in High School instead of Spanish like normal people still escapes me.”

Lisa shrugged. “They didn’t offer Italian. Not that Latin really helps with Italian, but at least it helped with French.”

**“Quantum potes dicere?” Caitlin asked cheerily.

“Satis scio loquar,” Lisa giggled. “Ego potest loqui de maxime facile.”

Len snorted. “Show-off.”

“I wonder who I get it from,” she returned. “Anyway, we’re getting off track. We’re here for Barry, remember?”

“Right,” he sighed. “Alright. If Cisco agrees that this is what’s best, and you’ve managed to convince the rest of the family…I guess I agree to this…transfer.” He scowled over at Iris. “But if things get any shadier, we’re pulling him out. Right?”

Iris smiled wearily. “Of course, Len,” she said softly. “I would never let anyone hurt Barry.”

His gaze softened. “I know.” He glanced over, studying Caitlin closely. “There is one thing I don’t get. If Cisco’s workin’ at STAR, why didn’t he come with you? It sure as hell would have been easier getting me on board.”

“Because he’s one of your crew?” Joe teased with a snicker. “Somehow I don’t think we would have stayed on point at all.”

Snow grimaced. “Cisco…doesn’t actually know who we’re treating. Dr. Wells insisted it was better if we didn’t know while we were researching a cure. I was only notified when Dr. Wells decided to make the visit yesterday. He took me because I’m an actual doctor on top of being a research doctor. Cisco wasn’t needed.” She shrugged. “I doubt Dr. Wells even knows they know each other. He was certainly astonished when he learned Cisco and Hartley had already met, though he seemed less surprised to find that—well, nevermind."

Len raised a brow at her sudden stop, but she shook her head dejectedly. She seemed close to tears. He let it go.

Joe laughed again, finally relaxing now that everyone was on board. “Well, Cisco is in for a surprise."

For the first time in months, Len grinned, tipping his chair back. “We should call everybody, get us all in the same place again. Just like old times. Well, almost."

His smile dimmed, but Iris snorted. “Isn’t half the _crew_ in jail by now? That’d be a little hard.”

Len shrugged, nonchalant. “Technicalities. Survival of the fittest. We’ll have the best of us together, at least.”

Caitlin’s eyes were wide. _What have we started_ , she thought to herself.

Oh, Caitlin, honey. You have no idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *This conversation goes something like this:  
> "Can you really blame him? I'm sure Cisco was as excited as Barry by the Particle Accelerator."  
> "That doesn't mean the guy's gotta be an idiot. The next thing we'll know, Hartley'll be there."  
> "Do you know Hartley, too? That's really weird."
> 
> **This really is just:  
> "How much can you say?"  
> "I know enough. I can talk about most subjects easily."


	7. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is all I've got so far. Let me know how you like it!
> 
> Also let me know if you'd prefer me to continue this series or the When Meddling with Time series, because they're almost the same but not and it's eventually gonna get to confusing to keep up with.
> 
> Okay, so, happy reading!

Sure enough, when Cisco saw his childhood friend Barry lying on the bed in the middle of the medical wing of STAR Labs, he _freaked_.

"Oh, my God!" he shouted, rushing over to the man. He leaned over the bed. "Barry...What happened to you?" he murmured.

He'd grown up from the teenager Cisco remembered him as—all knees and elbows, short and lanky but with a little bit of baby fat and a lot of cuts and bruises. Now he was tall and thin, no fat but no muscle, and his face was a lot more angular. His face looked sunken but peaceful, the space under his eyes lightly colored with purple veins, and his hair seemed newly cut. It was the same hairstyle he'd had since they were kids, all strategically disheveled like a movie star, and Cisco wanted to cry.

"Oh, Barry," he croaked. He looked up as a hand landed on his shoulder. Caitlin smiled at him sadly. " _He's_ the one we've been looking for a cure for? _Barry_?"

She nodded grimly. "I'm sorry."

Cisco stood up taller, looking away. "I just need a minute. Then we should get back to work."

Caitlin nodded, leaving him alone with Barry.

* * *

It took a lot longer than a minute for Cisco to feel ready enough to get back to work.

He and Barry had been friends for a long time. They didn’t talk often anymore, not like they had in high school, but they had a lot in common. They were there for each other, just like all the Rogues were. If you weren’t going to be there for the rest, you didn’t belong. That was just how it was.

He remembered how it was, before Len got there. It was hazy from nearly two decades of time passing, but he remembered how much it sucked. And then Len was there, cutting through the BS like it was nothing, separating the good from the bad like it was his job. It only got better when Iris and Barry joined—the three of them, Iris and Barry and Len, they were the backbone, the glue that held everything together. The crew revolved around them.

Which really meant that the crew revolved around Barry, because Len and Iris were always focused on keeping him safe.

Cisco could easily recall a dozen times he and Ronnie had been called in as “distraction reinforcements”, and Mick and Shawna were called in as “bodyguard reinforcements”, because Len and Iris were away talking to the bullies. Barry might have been a Rogue, but that didn’t mean nobody wanted to beat the tar out of him. Still, everyone made sure _he_ never knew that.

Now, as he lay in a coma, he looked even worse than he did after a beat-down. It wasn’t that he had bruises and cuts and broken bones, but because he seemed…defeated. Worn-down. Tired. It made Cisco wonder what had happened in the last few years.

His gaze shifted from Barry’s face down to the scars littering his arms and chest. He winced when he saw the tell-tale lightning scars crawling from his throat toward his abdomen. If Barry had so many of those things…he must have been struck pretty hard.

There were burn scars, too, but not from fire—the looked like chemical burns.

Lastly, Cisco noticed the odd silver lines on his forearms. Old scars.

Tears sprang to his eyes. “No…”

They had to be _years_ old—maybe even from before high school—but just the fact that it _happened_ …

The Rogues were so excited when Barry and Iris joined. Iris joined months before Barry, and she and Bette and Shawna had been friends since…well, forever. So when she joined it was simple. And then she and Len were always talking about Barry and how awesome he was that everyone was half in love with him before he even joined.

It was funny, because they'd all actually known each other for so long, and they knew a lot about each other, but never hung out. It was only because Len missed his brother and sister when he was with the Populars that anyone suggested Barry and Iris be included.

When Barry started hanging with them, things only got funnier. They only got closer to each other. Cisco and Ronnie talked to him about science and chemicals and engineering for days on end; Roy came out of his shell sometimes to talk to Barry and Iris about art; Mark and Shawna just loved getting Barry flustered; and Mick, Len, and Barry always joked about sports.

Plus Barry was the one to convince Mick to get help. Len had done a lot of the talking, but it was Barry's ideas and feelings on the subject that got Mick through. If Barry and Len hadn't been so adamant, Cisco didn't know where Mick would be now. Definitely not with a steady job and a stable house.

 _Honestly_ , Cisco thought as he sat by the bed, trying to get his breathing under control. It was a real shame that the whole crew was really sucky at keeping in touch. Cisco, Hartley, and Ronnie had, yeah, but now Ronnie was—

And Len made a point to call everyone every now and then, sure, but that wasn't enough to keep everyone too close. Cisco, at least, had kept track of how everyone was doing, if only by stalker-ish levels of observation.

Somehow, though, he'd missed Barry's coma completely. How had that happened?

In fact, the last time he'd even spoken about the old times was with Hartley, of all people.

(Well, technically with Ronnie, but he’d rather not remember…that night.)

* * *

When Cisco had first started at STAR Labs, he'd been so excited that he could hardly contain himself. It was _STAR Labs_! Who wouldn't be excited? Dr. Wells seemed pretty cool, when he'd told him he got the job, and everyone else around the labs seemed nice enough.

This wasn't his first big job, of course—he'd graduated from college nearly three years before, quickly getting picked up by some of the bigger-name contractors. He was a mechanical engineer who just happened to also specialize in environmental effects (something he'd gotten into after a particularly in-depth discussion with Iris in high school) as well as biological impurities.

Science was his passion, something that he was interested in, and that interest didn't seem to wane at all.

He'd engineered a ton of stuff for many different companies, but he'd always had the intention of coming back to Central. It was his home, always would be.

What he wasn't expecting, however, was that other Rogues would have the same idea.

Specifically, one Hartley Rathaway. Hartley had been a total brat in elementary school, but he'd gotten better in middle school, after he and Len got into a fight about privilege over right.

Cisco himself hadn't been in the room at the time—he and Ronnie had been finishing a project with Barry on the other side of school—but Shawna had told him, "Hart and the boss looked like they were ready to kill each other. When Lenny finally managed to get it through Hart's thick head, Hart skipped the rest of the day."

In fact, Hartley had skipped the rest of the _week_ , and when he finally came back he almost immediately went over to Iris' desk and asked about joining community service clubs, since she was in four of them. Iris and Hartley actually ended up making a new one by the end of the year, and they'd roped most of the Populars into it. Even Axel and Clyde had joined. It'd been pretty fun.

When Hartley had moved the summer before high school, Len had given him a stiff warning not to fall back into his old patterns. Cisco wasn't sure if he'd held to that, or if Len was keeping close tabs on him at all.

Cisco hadn't spoken to the other scientist since he himself graduated high school early. He'd called Hartley to ask him if he was looking at colleges yet and if he had any ideas about engineering schools.

If Cisco was remembering right, Hartley's exact words had been, "Do your own research, idiot."

Of course, in true Hartley fashion, he'd also quickly muttered, "Congratulations, by the way. Good luck." And then he'd hung up.

They hadn't spoken since, but they were still friends on Facebook. Apparently, though, Hartley didn't like to advertise where he worked on social media, because there had been no indication that he had any ties to STAR at all, let alone that he was one of the major proponents of the particle accelerator. Which would have been nice to know, you know, instead of being blindsided when he came in on his first day of work to find Dr. Wells and his old friend playing chess.

Surprisingly, Hartley was losing. Hartley was the best chess player he knew, and he was losing to the doctor. It was hilarious.

Cisco knocked on the doorway. "Dr. Wells?"

The man himself glanced over with a grin. "Ah," he began, standing. "There he—"

Hartley looked up, bolting to stand. " _Cisquito_?"

"Nice to see you, too, Piper." Cisco grinned brightly, laughing and pulling his old friend into a hug. "Didn't know you were working here, Hart."

"I didn't know you applied, Ramon," the man said, pushing his glasses up. "Color me shocked, but I never thought you'd be interested in this place."

"Are you kidding? A treasure like this? How could I pass it up? Besides, Central is home."

"As I know better than most," Hartley agreed.

"I'm sorry," Wells said suddenly. His brow was raised—if Cisco hadn't known better, he would have said he seemed...irritated, almost. "How do you two know each other?"

"School," Cisco answered easily. "Elementary and Middle, mostly, though we've kept in touch a bit through the years.”

“Mm,” Hartley intoned. “Yes, well, Cisco. I see you haven’t changed much. Honestly, how is that shirt appropriate for your first day working in a state-of-the-art research lab?”

Cisco rolled his eyes. “Tch. This guy. I had another shirt, but I spilled coffee on it.”

“Don’t tell me you took the train.”

“Yep,” he said sheepishly. “I called a taxi, but the guy was a jerk. Like a huge jerk.”

Hartley shook his head. “Have you talked to Raymond yet?”

Cisco’s brow shot up. “Ronnie’s here, too? Dude, are all the Rogues here, or something?”

Now Dr. Wells definitely seemed irritated. “The Rogues? What’s that?”

“Our team name, from school,” Cisco replied, offhanded. “Just what we called our group of friends, I guess. Not a big deal.”

“Right, well.” Wells seemed a bit uncomfortable. “Hartley, would you mind giving Cisco a tour of the facility? Then you should both get to work. We’ve got an accelerator to stabilize.”

“Come on, _Cisquito_. Maybe we’ll run into Raymond and the future Mrs. Raymond.”

“Ronnie got _engaged_?”

“Yeah. She’s a real ice queen, too. I bet Snart would love her.”

“Seriously? Tch. For real, though. Any other Rogues lurking around here that I should know about?”

Hartley shook his head, leading him down the hall. “No. Snart and Allen are at the CCPD, Iris is at CC Jitters while she works on her degree. Shawna and Bette are still overseas, Mark is still in Michigan, as far as I know. Mick is in Keystone, he took over the forge, I think. Haven’t seen Axel or Clyde in years, but Sam is working over at _Reflections_.”

Cisco rolled his eyes. “Shoulda guessed that. Did Roy get his art store?”

Hartley shrugged. “He started it, yeah, but I think he was having some issues getting a lease on a building. He _did_ go to jail, after all.”

Cisco sighed. “It really wasn’t his fault, though. Either time.”

“I know.” Hartley paused in his steps, peeking into a room. “Dr. Snow.”

A woman looked up from where she was messing with her purse. Her lips tightened into a straight line. “Hartley. What brings you to this side of the building?”

“Just thought you might want to meet your new partner.” He cleared his throat. “Cisco Ramon, meet Doctor Caitlin Snow, soon to be Mrs. Ronald Raymond.”

Cisco held out a hand. “It’s great to meet you.”

Now she smiled. “You, too, Cisco.”

“Where’s the mechanic?” Hartley asked bluntly.

“Where he always is,” she said tightly. “In fact, I was on my way to grab him. We’re headed out to dinner for our anniversary.”

“Mind if I walk with you?” Cisco asked. He put his hand up defensively when she narrowed her eyes at him. “Sorry, but me and Ronnie go way back.”

“Ah.” She smiled. “Did you got to school with him, too? With Hartley?”

“Si.”

“Huh. Well, in that case, you can tell me all about what Hartley was like before he became such a jerk.”

“Oh, no can do, señorita,” Cisco replied with a laugh. “I’m afraid he’s always been this way.”

Hartley huffed angrily. “I’ve got a lab to run. Have fun on your stroll down memory lane, _Cisquito_.”

He disappeared, and Caitlin turned back to Cisco with a grin. “Let’s go find Ronnie.”

“Lead the way, milady.”

* * *

He should have gotten into contact with the others then. He _should_ have. But he didn’t. And now he was blindsided.

There was really only one thing to do.

“Caitlin. I don’t care what we have to do. We need to get him awake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. So...this is obviously not an update, it's really just me changing the notes to let people know what's going down with me. This same note is gonna be posted in the notes of every one of my WIPs, so if you're reading multiples, you just have to read on of them--it's exactly the same note.
> 
> So, I'm a fucking retard. Like, maybe the dumbest person on the planet. What's that saying? "The definition of insanity/ignorance is repeating the same actions and expecting a different outcome"? Basically, yeah. Either I'm stupid or insane, because that's what I keep doing.
> 
> Okay, here's the gist--I. Don't. Do. Technology. I don't. And technology doesn't really seem to want to cooperate with me, ever, either.
> 
> Basically, I took everything off of my phone--pictures, videos, documents, music, everything that wasn't an app pretty much--and put it on my computer. Not a big deal, I've done this several times when I'm working on renaming or organizing or whatever.
> 
> Except.
> 
> My mom got a NEW computer. That means we have three now (four if you count the desktop that nobody uses and that doesn't even work really). She says we're getting rid of the oldest laptop--which is the one I always use--because it sucks and they don't make updates for it anymore etcetera etcetera.
> 
> So my dumb ass is like, welp, gotta get my shit together, and I took everything I had on that computer--yes, everything, again--and put it on a SanDisk FlashDrive.
> 
> And NOW THE DAMN THING WON'T FUCKING OPEN. Everything is gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.
> 
> Docs. Pics. 20,000 songs. Videos. Everything. My whole life--down the drain. I basically have to start over and I don't even know half the things I lost. I swear to every fucking god I can think of, if I have to answer for my screaming and crying one more time...
> 
> Anyway, yes, I'm a dumbass. I'm a crazy bitch. And I'm so, so, so, so, SO sorry for this shit. I know ya'll want to read this, but I don't have any of it anymore. It's gone. I have to start over. Honestly, half of my stories might not come back from this. I'll let you know. IDK what you wanna do, subscribe or bookmark or whatever you need to do to get updates, but it's gonna be a couple of months. If this had happened at the beginning of summer, maybe it would take less time. But I'm starting my first year of college, and updates were already gonna be slower even than my usual turtle-ness, so...
> 
> Anyway, I'm really, really, really sorry. Please don't hate me. I won't day it's not my fault, because it is, but I AM sorry that I'm disappointing everyone. Again.
> 
> Okay. Talk to y'all soon. I've got work to do.


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